“I am not a fake nationalist. The BJP despite wanting to is not able to do Hindu-Muslim in these elections,” said Kunwar Danish Ali to News18, with a laugh. Ali is the Congress candidate from the Amroha Lok Sabha seat in western Uttar Pradesh for the upcoming polls. He won in 2019 as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate while in alliance with the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Ali is facing a tough challenge this time as though he still has the SP’s support, the BSP has also fielded a Muslim candidate in Amroha, while Bharatiya Janata Party’s former MP Kunwar Singh Tanwar is contesting again with backing from the RLD now. On the ground, Tanwar seems to be running a stronger campaign. Ali won by 63,000 votes in 2019 and hit the headlines last year when BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri called him a “terrorist” among other things inside Parliament. Bidhuri was later denied a ticket by the BJP.
“People of Amroha saw what happened to me in Parliament. I am a Gandhi-vadi, an Ambedkar-vadi, and a Samajwadi person…I am not a fake nationalist,” Ali told News18.
Asked about the BJP denying a ticket to Bidhuri, he said that was an internal matter of the ruling party but the abuses in Parliament do ring out on the ground among people in Amroha. “What was said was wrong on many levels. Ali has our sympathy,” a group of Muslim voters in Hasanpur said.
Non-vegetarian Food during Festivals
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday castigated opposition leaders for openly having non-vegetarian food during Hindu festivals and said people’s sentiments were being hurt. Ali said this was a non-issue.
“See, they (BJP) are getting no opportunity for doing polarisation. People have understood it and are ready to teach a lesson to the government. You have nothing to show for the last 10 years, so you make such statements,” he told News18. “Who eats what, drinks what, do our girls wear jeans, or skirts, or cover their heads — they have the freedom to do as they wish. This is not even a relevant issue. The relevant issue is: has farmers’ income doubled? Our thinking is that what someone wants to eat or wear is their freedom,” Ali added.
Opposition Unity, Agenda
The BSP had dismissed Ali for “anti-party activities” and he later joined the Congress this year. “Mayawati is not upset with me…we are with our ideology with conviction and the BJP can only be defeated by the INDIA bloc and we had tried that Mayawati should join us and the opposition be united,” Ali told News18.
He said his agenda in Amroha was the same as Rahul Gandhi’s — that “farmers, youth, and women should get nyay (justice)”.
“Rahul Gandhi has taken out two yatras — all sections of society are distressed. The youth need jobs. Everyone has seen that youths were beaten up by lathis when they went to Lucknow seeking jobs. The government does paper leak because it does not want to give jobs,” Ali claimed. He said the BSP’s Muslim candidate won’t be able to split the votes. “I am getting SC votes in big numbers…all the communities are voting for me,” he asserted.
Challenge from BJP
Danish Ali dismissed his BJP challenger, calling Kunwar Tanwar a “big businessman with a lot of money” and advised him to focus on his business. Tanwar has a big farmhouse on the outskirts of Amroha, complete with a helipad. “People have seen his work for five years before I defeated him. He should do his business, he is not here to serve the people,” Ali told News18.
He added that the people of Amroha had seen how he raised their problems in Parliament, compared to Tanwar’s tenure in 2014-19. “This seat has been infamous that any moneyed person comes here and wins and goes away. I broke this myth with the support of the people and will break this myth again…the moneyed and business people cannot serve the people as they get busy in their business,” Ali said. He added that not just Muslims, but the upper castes were also against the BJP this time.
The BJP camp in Amroha, however, is confident of a victory, pointing out how the top Congress leadership like Rahul Gandhi or Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have not come to campaign for Ali yet. Congress’s UP incharge Avinash Pande though was present at a rally by Ali in Hasanpur on Friday and the local Samajwadi Party MLA organised it. “Very soon, you will have Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi campaigning here,” Pande assured the crowd. Amroha will have polling on April 26 in the second round of the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections.
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